At present, the telecommunications industry anticipates that millions of machine type communications (MTC) devices catering to variety of use cases that will impose a significant burden on telecommunication networks in the near future. This influx of MTC devices introduces a huge opportunity and unseen challenges for telecommunications industry. Current narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) enhancements in LTE networks permit MTC servers to use existing LTE procedures and infrastructure to facilitate communications involving MTC devices. Notably, existing connectivity with an MTC device still relies on long term evolution (LTE) and 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) based procedures, which may not necessarily be needed for devices that frequently send and receive small amount amounts of data to an application server (AS).
Communications to MTC devices can significantly impact LTE networks. For example, LTE network nodes may be configured to authenticate device trigger requests or other messages that are directed to an MTC device (e.g., a smart electricity meter, a smart refrigerator, a smart lamp, a smart water meter, etc.). Such message authentication may be performed by one or more core network nodes known as home subscriber servers (HSSs). As the number of MTC devices that use an LTE network increases, the amount of signaling traffic for authentication associated with MTC devices will increase, thereby increasing traffic load on the network, and the HSSs in particular. While additional resources can be added to the HSSs to accommodate the increasing load, such solutions can be expensive and require significant time to implement.